Reflections on Public Scholarship: Afterthoughts from the Imagining America Conference in Seattle

I spent three days among some of the most innovative public scholars in the nation. From panel presentations to poster sessions, I learned of exciting academy-community partnerships, fresh approaches to the pedagogy of service learning, and the challenges faced in implementation – both in the community, and the academy. With the backdrop of recent readings for this class and my struggles as an instructor and community practitioner, I arrived at IA in hopes of learning new strategies to further my development as an engaged scholar, and perhaps refine my understanding of what public scholarship is and its potential to facilitate sustainable community development.



The sessions offered a variety of program examples, their successes and challenges. There were opportunities to discuss the integration of critical theory, reflection, scholarship, and engaged practice. I was invited to share my Mart experiences in a closed seminar on equity and mutual benefit within community-university partnerships. As with most gatherings of this kind, there were standout moments and programs that ignited and inspired – sending my brain to overdrive mode. The conversations and networking that occurred outside the sessions was as much or more valuable than the sessions themselves. The more candid discussions revealed the frustrations of doing public scholarship, meaningful service learning projects, and community engagement work in the academy, particularly R-1 universities who, in some institutions - not all, view service learning as a means of collecting data and conducting “research” rather than promote sustainable change and student learning through reciprocal and reflective practice (thanks Jen Saffron for the articulation ). We also dared to tread in the murky area of mistakes and challenges, burnout, and how hard this work really is when putting theory to practice. Simply put, this is messy stuff all the way around.



I was inspired by many of programs happening around the country in urban and rural areas, on campuses, in storefronts, with school districts, and those embedded in and directed by the community with the academy in a more peripheral relationship. IA is spearheading several innovative initiatives including a tenure initiative, and more recently a mixed method study to develop profiles of public scholars at the graduate and early career stage. (visit http://www.imaginingamerica.org/) The gathering of folks doing this work from all over the country helps with perspective, support, and generates lots of new ideas. I hope to see more of the community partners in the future. Last year in New Orleans I presented the Mart work on a panel with Stephen Sloan from Baylor University Oral History Institute and Janet Bridgewater, a Mart resident. Everyone was interested in Janet's stories and perspective – far more than Stephen’s and mine (as it should be). As with most organizations these days, IA functions on a limited budget; however, supporting residents from the communities we work in partnership with to attend is invaluable.


Stephen Sloan, Janet Bridgewater, Paula Gerstenblatt - Imagining America Conference 2009


I also think about how building sustainable communities has to include the academy and sustainable public scholarship and service learning programs built on the principals of reciprocity and reflection – not just the collection of data for research and publication in journals that most of the folks we work in communities will never read or perhaps even fail to be advanced by. This is ever present in my mind as the semester proceeds with our students in Mart and the refinement of the course for next semester and beyond. I am also giving great thought to my multiple roles and if my attempt at functioning in this capacity is way too ambitious and perhaps even impossible. The Capra piece on leadership was helpful; however, the particulars of my multiple role quandary may prevent me from being effective, therefore, I am evaluating the best course for the project, my research, and my place in Mart as extended family member. More to come on that dilemma!

Finding Connections...

Visit Artist Muhsana Ali creating a mosaic mural with Mart residents at the newly established Mart Art Co-op


UT students working on community garden/commons project at the Nancy Nail Library in Mart

Reading Capra was a bit of a challenge until page 11. The scientific metaphors are a bit of a reach for me as I balance my time between the academy, and work in Mart that includes teaching/bringing UT students to work on projects as well as the ongoing development of the Mart Community Project. That being said, pages 11-15 were very relevant to the work unfolding in Mart, thus useful consideration in bringing students into this community.

I was very interested in the discussion on resistance to change and how it allows you to work people's creativity rather than ignore it - and furthermore transform it into a positive force by involving them in the process of change from the start increases the chances that they will choose to be disturbed because the process is meaningful to them is critical in community development. Although this article refers to mandated organizational change,once a movement gains traction and "disturbs" the status quo, there is no turning back the clock. I have found this to be true in Mart, where the first instigation was an art installation construction that led to a quest to document the much overlooked black history of the town. The involvement of Baylor, the local press, and a small group of residents determined to rectify the past disregard, called attention to the demarcation of the color line in Mart. However, the olive branch was extended to white residents to participate and include their memories as well. Involving all residents and institutions brought them on board in support of the project and created a springboard for the subsequent expansion into a community wide development effort.

The other area of Capra's article that had utility was the discussion on leadership and finding the appropriate balance between design and emergence. According to Capra, this requires a blending of two different styles of leadership. The first style, a more traditional concept of leader is one who can hold a vision and articulate it with passion and charisma - and whose actions reflect values that serve as a standard for others to strive for. The other type of leadership involves facilitating the "emergence of novelty", creating conditions rather than directing and using authority to empower others. The common thread according to Capra is creativity - creating a vision and going outside the box to new territory. This facilitation and emergence helps the community as a whole create something new - as Capra states, "Facilitating emergence means facilitating creativity."(p.14)

Capra briefly touches on the strategy of hiring an outside consultant as a catalyst. BY Capra's definition the consultant is not affected by the process they help to initiate, therefore can analyze the situation more clearly. In management of organizations, I think this is very true and serves a purpose at the initial stage of change; however, in a community setting over the long term the catalyst must find a way to transfer this spark into viable homegrown leadership. I have functioned in all three of the above mentioned types of leader, criss-crossing from one to the other with a unique vantage point of being a member of a Mart family, and to further confound the situation, I am white and my family is black. My multiple roles gives me advantage though it also comes at a price - see previous blog post.



The discussion on resistance, disturbance, leadership, emergence, and creativity is a focus of my work in Mart as well as my student's projects in partnership with Mart residents. The discussion on pages 11-15 will be very useful in framing and describing the issues confronted in community engagement and in particular public scholarship endeavors such as our UT class of students and the Baylor Oral History Institute. Visit www.martcommunityproject.org to get a sense of what is unfolding in Mart and a context to my posts.

Text Poetry from the Road

While spending a few days in Mart recently working on the Mart Community Project, I met with one if the local "pioneer family" matriarchs who has been resistant to the Mart Community Project. Like me, she married into her Mart family. Unlike me, her husband's family is prosperous,prominent, and control quite a bit of land holdings in the area and beyond. She was (and remains) irritated by the fact that our project was funded over her pet project. I went to visit her in the spirit of community building, and to be honest, to appease some of our older, white supporters who view her as a potential asset or threat.

On the surface the meeting went well enough - she basically interrogated me with questions about the project, including how much we are paying artists, how many people are involved, and are we working with a "select" group of people - code for black people. I responded with the same transparency evident at our meetings where a budget is available for everyone to review. I was polite, suppressed my authentic self in the "best interests" of the project, and when the moment came to leave I exhaled. There was personal chit chat about our lives and children. We are a well traveled, well educated, family. Her usual superiority in Mart does not inspire awe; however, her reference to certain members of my extended family made me want to scream. I know better. I know my niece in law's mother was not her "good friend who helped her raise her children" - she was her maid. I sat here and listened though, did not challenge her construction of reality, nor did I expressed sarcasm or outrage when she said she did not care about the UT class of students coming to Mart in fall and spring semester to work on service projects. Of course not, her agenda was driven by her pet project not receiving funding because in her mind, ours had displaced her her unchallenged allocation year after year.

During this same work visit I encountered a class/race battle with a member of my team. She is from a nearby town, very talented and bright,and has endured her own battle coming from an established white family as an artist who has walked a different path. However, the collision of class and race in Mart provoked a confrontation between us on the goals of the project, what community building is, and how best to achieve "outcomes". I felt beat up - accused of being anti white, extreme, socialist, and having a chaotic work style. I was overwhelmed and for the first time in two years I wondered why I pursued this crazy project to begin with in the class entrenched, racially polarized south. I began to doubt myself and the potential of the project. Being the over responsible person that I am, and leader of the project with many folks depending on my enthusiasm, vision, and energy, I sucked it up and do what I always do - kept moving with my pain and doubt in tow.

Being in the throws of action phase, time for process and reflection is hard to come by. Still, I was experiencing trauma. I found myself sobbing and unable to sleep at night. I put on my game face, trying to reconcile all the opposing forces, endure the not so subtle racial statements and the frustration I was feeling towards both sides of the color line for different reasons. The pressure was building and I could not contain it. I missed my house in Austin and my two Golden Retrievers who offer a less complicated companionship. Knight and Schwarzman (2006) caution against too much energy in the Action phase and finished product and not enough on the process of learning and social change. I was suffering from this very misstep, and a neglect of the auto-ethnographic process.

I was compelled to consider the consequence of community building, activist scholarship, and working in a place where the authentic self is sometimes shrouded. I felt as if I had betrayed my biracial children, my family, members of the community who had been given short shrift for generations. And for what? Was this really the way to go? And at what price for everyone involved, including me? I found myself sobbing in the parking lot at Walmart. When my niece called me, she heard the quiver in my voice and rushed over to comfort me, assuring me I had betrayed no one. The outrage and hurt I was feeling was nothing new to her, or the rest of my family, including my kids who grew up dealing with racism everyday in the progressive SF Bay Area. Keep doing what you are doing she insisted - it matters and will reap us all benefits.

I was urged by my colleague in the project and friend, an oral historian at Baylor, to record everything. He put his arm around me and told me I never have to meet with that woman again, or answer her questions. The tears streamed down my face, finally feeling I could reveal my true self and lean into someone without risking the project. Although I knew I had to begin my own account, I had little concentration for writing while spending my days like a whirling dervish between tasks. I also knew if I started writing on the computer it would get bogged down with intellectual masking tape and forsake the gut wrenching rawness of my feelings. One early morning when sleep was elusive, I began a series of what I will call "text poetry", texting in my bed and then moving outside to the porch when the sun began to rise. The following is the content of those free fall, unfiltered poems.

TEXT POEM #1
pulled in a million pieces
no mater what i do
someone always mad
can't sleep
or rest
holding up
carrying
canter is everywhere
but in my center space
power-privilege-race
personal-eternal-pain
dodging my authentic self
feeling hung up and out
with no where for me
to lean into reprieve
you are as they say _________

all kinds of nothing from
all kinds of nothing
inside me i am one big
question mark
covering my real face
my real hurt
my so called anger
my emptied out heart
unrecorded in real time
thrown but not caught
and where the hell are you?
oh right
i forgot
again

TEXT POEM #2
people see me but don't
know where i am
in the abyss of
converging realities
compressed
conflicted
to decide if there
is a direction to run in
the old white lady and
her
authority-superiority-and how dare you-come here
and think-well anything really
i held my hand and my voice from
smacking her with the
truth
and felt i had betrayed a list of people because of it
my kids
my family
my real folks
myself
that took a lot from me
for the project?
what project?
what ever shrinking soul?
i would rather be
swallowed by the ground
than swallow my own voice
with the faces of those i love retreating
into the background of
her one dimensional reality
and soul robbing air I couldn't breath in
much less feel myself
auto-ethnography my ass
this is war

TEXT POEM #3
you won't read this
rendering my words
null and void
so why not yell at the top of my lungs?
i give up
and out
of here
the rage of it all
stepped over the color
line without my colors
true colors
that is a mosaic no one wants to see
too much red
all that blood - Blood (no pun intended)
now which history do you
mean to represent?
safe or sorry?
both and neither
we are repackaging our
souls
bending over backwards
trying not to break
but we have already broken
good thing you and no one
will read this

TEXT POEM #4
you wonder where i am
no where
and everywhere
crossing borders
retreating
this is my artistic body of
no work
we are breaking ground
and plates-tiles-oh yeah
and minds
community engagement
through art
visions
research
truth and lies
bad asses
aristocrats
crack heads
faith based with no faith
this is my artistic body of
no work
cause work equals truth
or dare
and right now i am
neither

TEXT POEM #5
i am on the stoop
on a street in black folks' town
white woman in pajamas
early before the heat
chokes me
alone but for the stray
dogs wandering around
looking for? not me
this is the street where
tommy lived
played up and down
before everything happened
that led him to
me
and rena
and jonathan
how do you wrap your arms around magic?
time and space?
i want to see him back
then
floating free and happy in
his childhood
on a street of carefully
tended homes
and gardens
occupied by caring people
not this collection of
dilapidated and defeated
and abandoned and overgrown
why can't i see hm
instead of this?
i sure don't have a problem seeing
past/present racial divide
boy stay in your place-
this nice place we made
for you to keep you away
from us place
oh but look, there is a
red robin fluttering
about

References:
Knight, K., Schwarzman, M., & Others (2006). Beginner’s guide to community-based arts. New Village Press: Oakland, CA.

Good resource for public scholarship - Griffith University

http://www.griffith.edu.au/gihe/teaching-learning-curriculum/public-scholarship-community-engagement

There is a lot of great information - including a glossary of terms.